Teaching and Learning

At Hylands, Teaching and Learning is at the heart of everything we do. We are committed to cultivating exceptional teachers, who continually develop and reflect on their practice to ensure ever better outcomes for our students.

Each Tuesday, our teachers meet to partake in bespoke professional development, tailored to the needs of our staff and students, and delivered by our Teaching and Learning Team. We firmly believe that all teachers need to improve, not because they are not good enough, but because we are ambitious and believe we can become even better classroom practitioners. In addition to our Tuesday sessions, teachers meet fortnightly over breakfast to discuss pedagogy and engage in deliberate practice themselves to ensure they are continually improving and developing their skills.

Our experienced Heads of Department also lead Subject Specific Sessions six times across the year to target issues relating to their curriculum area and our middle leaders undergo training every half term to support ongoing career development.

Teaching and Learning at Hylands is rooted in research that has proven to have had the greatest impact on student outcomes. Our Teaching and Learning framework is based on a Direct Instruction model, believing teachers to be the experts and therefore best placed to explain challenging concepts with concise clarity. The application of new knowledge and skills is the key ingredient in moving this to the long term memory, so lessons focus on deliberate and purposeful practice to create more fluent and flexible learners.